Hotbed of Art Innovation Gallery Show Highlights Workshop at University of South Florida

Article excerpt

WALKING into the Graphicstudio show at the National Gallery of
Art is like walking into a visual version of "Who's Who" in
contemporary art.

There's a Robert Rauschenberg photograph, "Chinese Wall,"
rioting from one wall to another for 100 feet; a Chuck Close
portrait slightly smaller than the Jolly Green Giant; a muscled
Robert Mapplethorpe nude photo bathed in red light; a Roy
Lichtenstein "brushstroke chair" which you can actually sit on, as
he does; a Nancy Graves fantasy sculpture more complicated than the
Aeneid; and a Jim Dine signature heart as big as all outdoors.

The Graphicstudio exhibition of 90 prints, sculptures, and
photographs highlights the product of the collaborative workshop
founded at the University of South Florida (USF) in 1968 by artist
Donald Saff. He describes it as "a yeasty environment: things
happened, scale happened, work was profuse, place was talked
about...." He says that artists lined up to come to Florida to
participate, and a continuing dialogue took place between artists
and students.

The show, which runs through Jan. 5 in the gallery's West
Building, is drawn from the Graphicstudio Archive established at
the National Gallery in 1986.

Although the Graphicstudio workshop was in hiatus for five years
(1976-81) for financial reasons, it came back forcefully and is
viewed as one of the foremost workshops involved in original
production of fine art editions in the the US.